


but i can change my shirt

by pierianabeyance



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Depression, M/M, Slow Burn, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide, but don't worry there's lots of jokes, more tags to be added probs, now being continued! woo hoo, vent shit that got a mind of its own halfway through
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-05
Updated: 2017-03-17
Packaged: 2018-09-28 10:27:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10092272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pierianabeyance/pseuds/pierianabeyance
Summary: “There's really no way to make this not awkward," the boy muses, peering over the edge of the bridge with an amused tone to his voice that Keith can't even begin to understand, much less tolerate. "Jumping at the same time is a little too Romeo and Juliet for me, especially for a guy I just met. Double suicide isn’t really a first date kind of thing, you know? So that won't do.”“You could fuck off and find a different bridge. I don’t really care about what you planned, I got here first this morning.”The boy taps his fingers contemplatively against the railing for another moment before looking up, eyes bright, like he’s had some kind of breakthrough. He straightens up very seriously and holds out a clenched fist in Keith’s direction.“Rock paper scissors.”“Oh my fucking god.”--OR: Two suicidal college students meet on a bridge. What happens next will warm your heart.





	1. prelude || the boy on the bridge

**Author's Note:**

> This is...the second fic I've posted in my entire life and probably not one that I'm super proud of. It started out primarily as a vent piece and then I just had fun writing dialogue. Sorry if it seems...disjointed in places. I'll come back to fix it up later if I decide to continue it at all. I might actually just take it down in the morning if I come to regret posting it. This was also so ridiculously not proofread.
> 
> I have a vague idea for a story, but I'm really not sure if I'll even continue. I do promise, however, that if I end up continuing things will definitely be better. So you can hold me to that, if you'd like.
> 
> Anyways. Voltron is my latest obsession and so these two wound up with my issues projected onto them. I hope you can enjoy this.

It begins like this:

Keith thinks one night in the spring, not for the first time, about what a burden it is to exist.

It’s tiring. It’s a bore. The older he’s gotten the more difficult it’s gotten for him to see much of a point in it, and he’s told as much to Shiro the few times the latter had managed to extract any amount of genuine emotion and feelings out of him in a moment of weakness. Shiro is worried each time he says it, and so each time he says it he has to spend the next few weeks pretending he can function like a normal human being in an attempt to get his brother off his back, pretending like he has the motivation to so much as leave his bed on a normal day.

For the most part, he’s able to play his role well. He rolls out of bed in the morning whether he’s slept or not, he goes to class, he occasionally hangs out with the downstairs neighbor (hangouts which consist mostly of sitting in the same room for a few hours while silently browsing their respective laptops). He passes his tests and he eats a few times and eventually, Shiro reluctantly allows himself to believe that everything is alright.

It’s a burden to pretend like that, Keith thinks. He doesn’t really feel like doing it anymore.

One night in the spring, after spending quite a few hours staring at the ceiling and not falling asleep and not thinking about anything rather than how wonderful it would be to never have to move again, Keith decides that maybe he just won’t.

He gets out of bed and tells himself it’ll be the last time he has to, slips out the door of the apartment without waking up Shiro, and wonders where the nearest bridge is.   


* * *

 

Keith arrives at the bridge just as the sky is starting to lighten, stopping his motorcycle about halfway across and propping it up next to the railing. It would be silent without the sound of the engine if not for the quiet buzzing in his ears that never seems to go away these days, and he wonders vacantly what will happen to the motorcycle once he’s gone. He hopes it doesn’t get stolen before he’s found and it can be matched to him, hopes that it makes its way home to Shiro, maybe he can find some use in it. Or at least sell it. Even though it can’t really be worth much in the state it’s in.

Keith takes a few steps forward to lean out over the railing, staring down the drop and feeling himself go lightheaded as he sees just how far down it is. Even from as high as he is he sees the moon’s dim reflection in the still water below and he wonders how it’ll feel to hit it, if he’ll feel anything at all. He’s expecting something cold, that’s for certain, and something about the thought puts him off. He’s never much liked the cold.

 _Cold._ Fuck, it’s cold out. Cold for spring, even this early in the morning, and he realizes just how badly he’s shivering as he closes his eyes and pulls himself away from the railing.

It’s not a high railing. It should be easy to get over. But even with his eyes closed he can feel the distance to the surface of the water and he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to stomach another look, much less bring himself any closer. One hand reaches out to wrap around the railing, fist clenching tight against the cool metal as he forces himself to even turn his face back in the direction of the other side.

 _This is easy,_ he tells himself, and he forces his eyes open like he’s a child waking up from a bad dream in the middle of the night. He keeps his gaze steadily on the horizon, the sky already a shade lighter than it was just a minute ago, moving his other hand to grasp the railing as well. He reminds himself to breathe and almost laughs because he won’t need to know by the time he’s done here, inhales and exhales and watches the sky.

_This will be easy._

Keith tries not to think about the water underneath him and the ice running through his veins. His heart pounds hard against his chest like it’s trying to leap out for him, throw itself over the edge like it thinks his body won’t be able to. He curls his lip at the thought, tells his heart he’ll beat it there. His movements are quick as he brings one leg over the railing and then the other, keeping his hands around the top to keep himself steady on the small ledge that remains for foot room on the other side. His legs are irritatingly shaky, his body not seeming to match his mind’s resolve. Again, his brain reminds him to breathe.

Inhale,

_(He keeps his gaze upward, refuses to let it drop)_

Exhale.

_(His mind tries to coax his fingers to unfurl, release their death-grip on the top of the railing)_

Inhale,

_(It doesn’t seem to be making any progress. They clench as tightly as ever.)_

Exhale.

_(He wonders if Shiro is awake yet.)_

Inhale -

“Come here often?”

Keith nearly loses his grip and falls face first of the edge of the bridge right there, but manages to keep his balance as he lets out a strangled sounding yelp of surprise. He takes a moment to collect himself before whipping his head back around as much as he can to identify the person who’d spoken and only managing to catch them in the corner of his sight. It’s a bit of an uncomfortable, awkward position to be standing in, but he needs to properly get his anger across, glaring with a pair of wide and almost accusing eyes. “You almost fucking killed me!”

There’s a short laugh from behind and the sound of footsteps coming a bit closer, the person walking towards him. “Is that...not what you're trying to do already? Just taking a guess." Keith turns his head quickly back out to the sky just as the person comes up next to him, crossing their arms and resting them casually on the railing.

“I’d rather die on my own count,” he says. “Not because some _asshole_ shocked me into letting go.”

“Alright, fair enough.”

There’s a silence, a strange, uncomfortable silence that stretches between them and makes the ringing in Keith’s ears that much louder by comparison. The sun continues its slow rise over them as they stand there on the edge of the bridge and say nothing, do nothing. Keith’s not an asshole - he’s not going to throw himself off the bridge right in front of this stranger, doesn’t want the last thought on his mind to be about what that might do to the poor guy’s psyche. But the stranger doesn’t leave and Keith doesn’t know how to make him, so the silence and the stillness continue. Until, of course, it’s broken again.

“You never answered my question.”

“What?” Keith looks over at him full on for the first time and is surprised to find a pair of strikingly blue eyes staring right back at him, blue to match the river below. There’s something about him that once Keith sees, he can’t look away from and he finds himself staring, something stirring in him that he quickly tries to ignore.

(There’s no use wasting feelings on anyone anymore, not for him.)

The boy keeps looking right back at him. “I asked if you come here often. You never said if you did or not.” There’s a short pause in which Keith says nothing, so he continues on prompting him. “Did you like, scope the place out or something? Check it out at an earlier date and say to yourself, like, ‘Yep, this is it!’. Because like...this has kind of been my spot for a while.”

“Your spot?”

“Yeah, you know. The bridge that _I_ was going to jump off of. Throw myself down to the bottom of the river all dramatic and such.” His expression doesn’t change despite what he’s saying, somehow still maintaining a casual grin and a tone to match it. The blue eyes look expectant now, gauging for some kind of reaction - it takes Keith a moment, a moment to process exactly what he’s being told and match the words to the smile, but he does get it.

“Oh.”

_Oh._

Again, Keith looks away.

“What a coincidence, right?” Another laugh, light and easily drifting out in the morning air. “It’s a nice spot up here, really.”

“‘S alright,” Keith shrugs. He really doesn’t care much about the spot, though he is beginning to regret the water, already dreading what it might feel like in those last few minutes, that damn _cold_.

In the back of his mind, he tells himself that he should get it done now before he loses his nerve. Now that he knows the other boy shares the same goal as him, he doesn’t feel as bad thinking about dying in front of him, disappearing right in front of those blue eyes, the last eyes that would ever see him alive. Something about the thought is chilling.

The boy hums thoughtfully, drawing Keith’s attention back to him. “Don’t suppose I could convince you to rethink this, could I? Tell you life is worth living or something like that, get you to hop back on your bike and go home?”

Keith rolls his eyes. “I think that would be a little hypocritical of you.”

He sighs and begins to tap the tips of his fingers gently on the railing, and Keith can feel those eyes back on him even if he’s not looking. “Yeah. I thought so too. Worth a shot though.” There’s another brief silence between them, and then: “Well, how are we going to do this?”

“Uh…” Keith looks at him and then very quickly down at the water. “Jump? There’s really not much to this method.” He tries to move his eyes back up, away from the water, but he finds his gaze frozen there. _Shit_. Looking down was a bad idea, a really bad idea.

“What? No. I mean - well, yeah, but how are we going to organize this? Like, I’d be fine with sharing if you're really that determined, but there needs to be some level of planning here.”

The river is waiting underneath him and the light from the steadily rising sun spreads crystals across its still surface, begging to be broken. It looks cold, colder than anything Keith has ever faced. “Planning,” he echoes distractedly, shivering.

“Mm-hmm. There's really no way to make this not awkward," he muses, peering over the edge of the bridge with an amused tone to his voice that Keith can't even begin to understand, much less tolerate. "Jumping at the same time is a little too Romeo and Juliet for me, especially for a guy I just met. Double suicide isn’t really a first date kind of thing, you know? So that won't do.” Keith keeps staring down, caught in the beauty of the crystals dancing on the surface of the water. He wonders just how cold it will be. “Do you have any ideas?”

The continued talking is really ruining the mood he’s trying to put himself in, breaking his concentrating every time he tries to psyche himself up and just let the hell go. He sighs and tears his eyes away from the river to glare at the stranger, irritating slipping more obviously into his tone. “You could fuck off and find a different bridge. I don’t really care about what you planned, I got here first this morning.”

“Rude!” He exclaims, placing a hand over his heart in mock offense before shaking his head. “No, that’s stupid. We’ll figure something else out to decide who gets the bridge, if you’re really that opposed to sharing.”

 _Now, now, now,_ something in the back of Keith’s mind insists. His resolve is slipping the longer he stands there, the longer he waits. His window is closing and he knows it, he won’t be able to stay up here undecided much longer.

The boy taps his fingers contemplatively against the railing for another moment before looking up, eyes bright, like he’s had some kind of breakthrough. He straightens up very seriously and holds out a clenched fist in Keith’s direction.

“Rock paper scissors.”

Keith feels his resolve snap right there.

“Oh my fucking god.”  
  
"What?" He asks innocently as Keith turns around as carefully as he possibly can, starting a very cautious climb back over to the other side of the railing. "Nothing like a little roshambo to decide who gets to take the first leap of faith, right?"   
  
"You are way too happy for this," Keith mutters as his feet hit a much more sturdy pavement.   
  
He laughs and turns around to face the same direction as Keith, placing his back against the railing and crossing his arms over his chest. "Yeah, well. What else am I going to do? I'm kind of over moping. Standing up here, looking down there..." he whistles appreciatively as he peers over his shoulder and eyes the drop again, eyes bright and calm and the very same blue as the river waiting at the end. "It feels like a new beginning."

“Christ.” Keith shakes his head and turns around, eyeing the boy with disdain. “I sure fucking hope it isn’t.”

“Going home, then?” He asks almost smugly as Keith takes the few steps back to his motorcycle.

“Going to find a less annoying bridge to throw myself off of,” Keith snaps as he sits down and revs the engine. The sound fills the air around them and drowns out whatever the boy tries to respond with, Keith just managing to see his grin move without making a sound before he’s turned around and headed in the direction he came from.  


* * *

  
  
Keith does not, in fact, go looking for another bridge. The boy on the bridge kept him talking just long enough to break the resolve he’d spent so long building up and he winds up right back at home, unlocking the door to the apartment that he only just then realizes he'd taken with him as he left.

(Force of habit, what can he say?)

Shiro has already left for work and Keith sends a bullshit excuse in response to a text that he’d sent upon waking up, wondering where Keith had gone. He finds, then, that he doesn't really have any idea what to do with himself now - he hadn't exactly planned on being alive to come home. He settles reluctantly into his usual routine, sits on his bed and stares at the ceiling and taps at his laptop and thinks, not for the first time, about what a burden it is to be alive.

There are, however, two things that Keith does that day, two things that stray from said usual routine:

First, he keeps his window open just a crack, just enough to hear the cars passing by on the highway and just enough to hear if maybe, just maybe, there will be any sirens thrown into the mix, anything to indicate some kind of incident that needs speeding two.

  
Second, he refreshes the webpage for the local news, waiting for a story about a blue-eyed boy floating in the river with the ghost of a smile on his face as he greets his new beginning.   
  
The story never comes.   
  
Keith, for a reason he doesn't understand, can't help but feel relieved.


	2. i. blue eyes, take warning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah I was...not expecting actual responses to this…I’m glad that so many people seemed to enjoy it. I guess this means a continuation…! I made a few minor edits to the first chapter, mostly just switching some words around and adding some new sentences. Nothing too big, I just think it seems a little bit nicer now.
> 
> So...here we go. I do hope that I wrote Shiro well enough, he’s one of the only characters I’m a bit unsure about my dialogue for so I’m really hoping that I did alright with the few lines I gave him. Not much happens in this chapter still because it's mostly just me finding a way to put Lance and Keith back in the same place and also me wanting to put something out so everyone knows that this will be continued. I think from here I'm going to try and settle into a somewhat weekly update schedule - probably every Saturday or Sunday? But we'll see how that goes. Future chapters will be longer too, once the ball really gets rolling. This, like I said, was just me putting something out to let people know this will continue.
> 
> And [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGJdYxjkVBU) by the way is the song that the fic title is from. It’s a really good song and the title is half of my favorite lyric <3 
> 
> Anyways. I hope this meets whatever expectations you may have and you enjoy.
> 
> (Also, unimportant detail: Pidge has longer hair in this fic than she does in the show. Because...long hair Pidge. Also she has a pet lizard named Rover because this has kind of turned into a place to dump all my silly unimportant headcanons.)

It’s one week after Keith is annoyed out of his suicide attempt and someone is knocking on his bedroom door.

He knows it’s Shiro before anything is even said or the door is even opened, simply because there’s no one else it could be. There’s a total of four people that Keith interacts with on even a semi-regular basis and only one of them fits the two criteria required for knocking on his door (those criteria being: living in the apartment with him and being allowed to try and speak to him while the door is closed). 

So, as expected, it’s Shiro who walks through the door upon Keith’s invitation inside.

“Do you need something?” Keith asks without even looking up. Light pours in from the doorway and he resists the urge to physically recoil from it, something that he hasn’t looked directly at in probably a couple of days by this point. No, his week has been spent illuminated by the dim light of a laptop screen and blocking out any other kind that might try and get inside, going so far as to through his blanket entirely over himself during the brighter parts of the day and sitting underneath it for as long as he can until he feels like he’s really running out of air. Shiro, bless his soul, has been kind enough to leave him to his recluse for the week, assuming it was likely just another one of those off-weeks he’d been falling into more and more recently as of late - which, he supposes is exactly what it is. 

Unfortunately, it seems now that his period of being allowed to remain alone in his room has run out for the week. 

He watches Shiro approach the bed from the corner of his vision and feels him sit down on the opposite end, watching Keith continuing to type unbothered at his laptop. A moment passes in which Keith wonders if maybe Shiro is expecting him to say something else, and just as he’s about to look up and repeat his previous question, Shiro finally speaks.

“Have you eaten?” To his credit he does try to sound casual about asking, but Keith hears the underlying worry in his voice and can’t help but feel a little bit guilty.

“Uh-huh,” he lies easily, not looking up.

Shiro’s eyes stay on him. “Really,” he says, not sounding convinced of that in the least. “Because I’m pretty sure the last time you left your room for any reason at all was Wednesday, and I don’t even think you went into the kitchen.”

Keith pauses, his gaze flicking to the date on the bottom of his laptop screen, trying to match the date to the day of the week. “...What day is it now?”

“It’s Friday, Keith.”

Welp.

Keith looks up somewhat guiltily at that and finally meets Shiro’s eyes. 

It’s a strange kind of dance around the subject of Keith’s mental health that they do. Keith knows it’s not exactly hard to tell that something is wrong with him, and even if he  _ did _ cover it up a little better at home Shiro has had years and years of experience to learn his tells. He knows that Shiro knows something is going on, and he’s fairly certain that Shiro knows that he knows, but they don’t  _ talk _ about it, not outright, not usually. Usually the closest they get is something like this, the worried look in Shiro’s eyes as he stars across the bed in the dimly lit room at Keith’s face illuminated by a laptop screen and the guilt in Keith’s own face as it occurs to him yet again just how shitty of a job he’s been doing keeping himself together.

“Whoops?”

Nice one, Keith. An eloquent guarantee to rebuff any impending worry.

(Not.)

It’s a strange and difficult dance indeed, and Shiro watches him carefully for another moment as he tries to stay three steps ahead. 

“I think you should go out today,” he says finally, decisively, not at all sounding like Keith has any say in the matter. “Get some fresh air. It’s not good for you to keep yourself cooped up inside all day.”

Keith rolls his eyes even though the not often listened to rational part of his brain knows that he’s right. “Fine,” he sighs, shutting his laptop and pushing it off his lap. “I guess I could...go for a ride or something.”

“You could,” Shiro agrees as Keith swings his legs down off the bed and onto the ground. “Or…”

That doesn’t sound good.

“Shiro.”

“I may have already made plans for you.”

A pause. And then -

“Well.” Keith looks away from Shiro towards the door and stands up, stretching his arms out over his head before making his exit from the bedroom. “I’m going to go drown myself in the shower.”  
  


He thinks he hears something like an exasperated laugh behind him, but he doesn't turn around to check.

* * *

 

Spoiler alert: Keith does not drown himself in the shower.

Even if he wanted to, he’s not really sure how he would do that.

(And in any case, it seems kind of rude, doesn’t it, to drown yourself in your older brother’s shower? How ridiculously inconvenient would that be? Keith has better manners than  _ that. _ )

No, there is no drowning attempt in the shower. Just a lot of standing under the nearly scalding hot water and feeling a little bit like he’s melting underneath it while Shiro calls over the sounds of the running shower and through the bathroom door to tell Keith exactly what these plans he made are.

“I called Matt!” He’s saying while Keith burns indifferently. “Apparently it’s been awhile since Pidge went out properly too! Figured it would do the both of you some good to send you out to go do something!”

_ Pidge.  _ Well, that’s a relief. Pidge he can handle, he can more than handle - he actually quite enjoys Pidge’s company, she’s an easy person to both talk to and not talk to. There’s conversations, lengthy discussion of various conspiracy theories that the two of them had either found or thought up, technological babble from Pidge about her latest invention that she just gets so  _ into _ that he can’t help but be engaged by it; but there’s also long bouts of comfortable silence, sitting cross-legged on the floor of her bedroom while he listens to her tap furiously at the keys of her laptop and enjoying the surprising feeling of  _ peace _ that it brings him.

He’s never really had a  _ friend _ , sad as that sounds - he’s had Shiro, of course, but Shiro is different. Shiro is his brother, regardless of blood, his  _ family _ . There’s never been any question about that. 

But Pidge, he supposes, is what it feels like to have a  _ friend _ .

So Pidge is not the issue.

The issue follows:

“He said she’ll call some of her other friends! The two of you can take my car to pick them up!”

Pidge, unlike Keith, has other friends.

Keith does not know these other friends.

Keith does not know how to act around these other friends.

Keith isn’t entirely sure he has the energy to act right around these friends. Now, or possibly ever.

The temperature of the water drops without warning and Keith jumps, nearly losing his footing and  _ actually dying _ in the shower as previously promised. He scrambles to turn the water off and stop the barrage of increasingly cold water pouring down over his back, still bright red from the hot water that had only just been covering it, leaving him shivering in silence as the sound of the shower disappears with the water.

He sighs, pulls back the curtain, and reaches for his towel to dry himself off.

Shiro is leaning against the wall outside the bathroom door when it opens and Keith emerges, running lazy hand through his drying hair to pick out the knots he hadn’t bothered to take care of while he was melting. The steam from the bathroom follows him out and seems to vanish as it steps past the doorway, unlike Keith, who notes unfortunately that he is very much still there. 

“I think it’ll be good for you to get out of the house,” Shiro says, and Keith hates it because he knows that that  _ should _ be right, he knows that if he was a normal goddamn functioning human being that would help, but he also knows that he’s not a normal goddamn functioning human being and this is absolutely one-hundred percent not going to change anything.

But he doesn’t say that to Shiro because Shiro is trying and Shiro is also looking at him with those worried eyes again. Instead, what he does is give a thin, unconvincing smile, and say “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

He’s quick to leave after that, grabbing his jacket off the floor where he had left it one week ago exactly and forcing it over his still not quite dry arms, grimacing at the awkward sticky feeling of fabric on damp skin but knowing that if he doesn’t leave the house as soon as possible he’ll probably give up on going altogether and end up right back on his bed. He takes his jacket, shoves his feet into his boots without bothering to do much more than shove the untied laces inside them, and grabs the car keys off the counter on his way out the door.

Shiro is saying something about getting something to eat before he leaves, but Keith is already out the door.

* * *

Thirty-six minutes later finds Keith parked on a college campus that it took him way too long to realize was the campus of the college that he attends - or rather,  _ should _ be attending, he’s working on that - with Pidge curled up tiredly in the passenger’s seat tapping away at her phone.

“They’ll be out in a few minutes,” she’d said when they arrived, bringing her legs up to her chest and leaning back against the seat.

A few minutes pass and they’re nowhere to be seen. Keith is immediately impatient.

What can he say? He at least likes people to be  _ on time _ to the plans he didn’t want to have.

For the moment, he at least appreciates Pidge, sitting quietly in the seat beside him and allowing him his silence. In part it might be because she’s just as tired as he is, perhaps even more considering that judging by the messy ponytail and the sweatpants, she had just woken up in order to join Keith on this impromptu excursion.  

(“It’s two in the afternoon, Pidge, don’t you have school?” He had asked when he saw her outside as he got into the car.

“It’s two in the afternoon, Keith, don’t you have a life?” Had been her monotonous reply as she plopped herself into the passenger’s side.

Keith had rolled his eyes and allowed himself a grin as he started the car.)

“It’s probably Lance,” She tells him without prompting when his leg starts bouncing somewhere between minutes five and seven. “It takes him for _ ever _ to leave. Hunk will get him out eventually.”

And eventually he does, although eventually is eighteen minutes after their arrival in the parking lot. Eventually, Keith looks up just in time to see two figures moving towards the car, and he nudges Pidge in wordless questioning even though he’s fairly certain he already knows who they are. Pidge raises her hand to them in greeting and they both wave back enthusiastically, picking up the pace a bit and drawing close enough to the car that Keith can see them a bit better.

A chill - a genuine chill - runs down his back when he does.

_ Fuck. _

He wonders if it’s too late to drive home and also maybe die. 

Someone is talking as soon as they open the doors as they shuffle into the seats.

“It took me like, ten minutes to find my eyeliner, and then we passed those girls from down the hall - you remember the ones, Pidge, I told you, so of course I had to say something-”

He knows that voice. He knows that voice and he ducks his head and he prays to God that somehow, somehow between last week and today that person that the voice belongs to had suffered some sort of terrible head injury and fallen victim to a case of amnesia. A tragedy, truly.

The doors slam shut and Keith tightens his grip on the steering wheel, forcing his gaze up into the rearview mirror and widening his eyes like a deer in fucking headlights as he stares full in the face of his new worst nightmare. The two new additions to the car look up once they’re situated, greeting Pidge first and then turning to Keith.

“Hey, you must be Keith, right? I’m Hunk,” says the larger of the two with a warm smile that Keith does not have it in himself to return right then.

He’s distracted, see, by the pair of eyes he can see staring at his reflection the mirror, the strikingly blue eyes that look absolutely  _ delighted _ as recognition passes through them.

“Keith.” Says the boy from the bridge, cocking his head to the side and grinning with an unbelievable mirth. “Good to see you again.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m realizing now how much less of an idea I actually have for this fic than I thought I did. Woo-hoo! Time to go running in blind. Whatever. I’ll figure something out. Something with a happy ending, of course <3 Also this was, again, super not proofread. Lol. Whoops.


	3. ii. odd man out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BAD NEWS: i’m super...not satisfied with this chapter at all haha :’) it feels like another super nothing chapter but i promise things will be happening !!!! i promise i actually do have ideas
> 
> GOOD NEWS: i know exactly what im doing with the next chapters and daring to have faith in myself that they’ll be good!! and now there’s no way im not going to finish this fic because when i was supposed to be writing this chapter i was writing. the last chapter. the last fckin chapter is fully written yall like now i have to get there.
> 
> also gdfkhgjk i dont know if i can stick with that slow burn tag kids...ive been reading too many cute soft klance fics it hurt me to write them here NOT being gay and soft together
> 
> (and whoops accidentally tripped and threw in some hunk/shay because ive never seen a more wholesome ship in my life)

The boy from the bridge is waiting for something.

_ Lance.  _ That’s his name, process of elimination tells Keith that much, Lance staring down his reflection from the backseat of the car and waiting, waiting for a response, waiting for a reaction, and seeming a little bit like they’re maybe looking for something else too but Keith can’t quite put his finger on what it is.

Keith is not willing to play along with whatever game this Lance is trying to rope him into, not willing to be the one to bring up what he knows both of them are thinking. He does the only thing he can think to do, knowing that there are two other pairs of eyes watching him, and he plays dumb. “Do I...know you?”

The reflection of the blue eyes searches for just another second before they roll. “Well,  _ yeah, _ ” he says like it’s obvious, leaning forward a bit in his seat expectantly. “C’mon. Lance McClain.”  A short pause, nothing. Keith braces himself, waits for Lance to announce what both of them are thinking off, let the words roll out into the strange air of the car and let a laugh follow.

He doesn’t.

Instead, he says something else, something that somehow manages to be as far from what Keith was expecting as possible.

“We’ve...been in the same calculus class since last semester?” 

What.

Keith blinks, surprise clear. Lance keeps staring at him, keeps expecting something.

“We’ve been in the same astronomy class since the beginning of  _ this _ semester?”

_ What. _

“We...have?” 

He hears Pidge snickering next to him and Lance’s eyes drop down to her, surprised one second and the complete opposite the very next, widening like he’s just had the most shocking revelation of his life.

“Wait,” Hunk says next to him, looking between Keith and Lance with a similar expression, amusement evident in his tone. “Wait, Lance is this - oh my god. Oh my  _ god _ .”

Pidge’s snickers break out into a full on laugh. “You _ knew, _ ” Lance says. “You fuckin’ - you didn’t bother to say  _ anything-? _ ”

“This is him, then?” Hunk looks like he’s not far behind Pidge in terms of laughing, just barely keeping it together. “This is that guy you kept complaining about?”

“ _ Complaining _ about?” Keith turns fast in his seat and finds himself almost nose to nose with Lance. 

“Somehow this is even better than I thought it would be,” Pidge lets her laughter trail off into a happy sigh and straightens up, flashing both Keith and Lance a devilish grin. “I’ve been trying to get you two in the same place for  _ ages _ ."

However Keith expected this to go, it’s already pretty far off.

(He is going to  _ kill _ Shiro for allowing this to happen, knowingly or not.)

(And then himself.)

(Just for good measure.)

* * *

 

While Keith drives, he hears the story of how he apparently already met Lance before he thought he did. A story which, he insists, he has  _ absolutely no memory of _ much to Lance’s increasing chagrin and both Hunk and Pidge’s increasing amusement.

There really isn’t much to it, Lance says.

It goes like this:

Lance walks into his calculus class on the very first day and sees a boy with a mullet sitting in the back corner of the room.

In the moment, he doesn’t think much of it. Not much, that is, beyond  _ “Why the hell does that guy have a mullet? Weird.”  _

“Little did I know…” he says, followed by a pause and a dramatically prolonged stare out the window. “That mullet was soon to become the bane of my existence.”

Keith’s memory of his calculus class is a little hazy, see, because here’s the thing: he tended to sleep through a good majority of it. Nine in the morning, back of the room, fairly basic material that he found it easy to pick up on, allowing him to easily keep his grades as high as his energy - who could really blame him?

Lance, apparently. 

“He was _ infuriated, _ ” Pidge cuts in giddily while Lance rolls his eyes and Keith pointedly avoids looking at him through the rearview mirror again. 

“You’re making me sound  _ obsessed _ or something,” Lance whines. “Look, I just  _ happened _ to notice and  _ happened _ to find it annoying as hell.”

“It annoyed you that I slept?”

Again, Pidge cuts in before Lance gets a chance to answer. “It annoyed him that you slept and still managed to kick his ass with your grades.”

_ “Pidge!” _

Keith continues avoiding the mirror, keeping his eyes straight ahead though he still feels a chill on the back of his neck like there’s a pair staring right at him from behind. “How did you...know what my grades even were?”

Lance waves his hand dismissively. “That’s not important.”

“That’s...no, yeah, I think it’s a  _ little bit important _ .”

“Nope. Nah. Not an important factor in this situation.”

“Pidge, how the hell did he find out what my grades were like?”

Pidge smirks and shrugs, looking down at her phone. “You heard the man. Not important.”

Keith opens his mouth to ask again but Lance is quick to shut him down, repeating once more, as mentioned previously, there really isn’t much more to that story. So that’s where that ends.

(Pidge seems to be enjoying the conversation immensely.)

* * *

There’s a problem, Keith soon realizes, with Shiro’s plan, a problem that goes beyond the  _ initial _ problem where Keith had to fucking be here in the first place. The problem is that Shiro, for reasons that Keith could not possibly fathom, seemed to have put enough faith into this band of tired young adults to assume that once together they would know exactly what they were going to do with their time.

They did not, in fact, have any idea.

“We could see a movie?” Pidge suggests. “There’s gotta be something good playing…”

“Noooo, Pidge, you can’t  _ talk _ in a movie theater!” Lance shakes his head.

“Sounds like the perfect setup to me,” Keith says.

Lance ignores him. “We should go somewhere fun! There’s all kinds of fun stuff to do around here and we haven’t done anything fun in for _ eeeeeever.” _

Pidge twists in her seat to look at him. “We literally hung last week.”

“Do you  _ realize _ how long ago last week was? Like...an  _ entire week _ ago! And then just a few days ago, you and Hunk went out  _ without me _ -”

“We invited you, dude,” Hunk interrupts him. “You said you were busy all week.”

Lance sighs dramatically. “Well,  _ whatever _ . My point is I want to do something fun which allows me to interact with my dear old friends and provide me with an opportunity to get to know this new friend!” Keith glances very quickly up at the rearview mirror when he hears himself referenced and immediately regrets it, just managing to catch Lance winking at him before he averts his eyes. “I think we have a  _ lot _ to talk about. Don’t you?”

Keith grips the steering wheel a bit tighter.  _ What the fuck is he doing?  _ “Sounds to me like you’ve just got a lot to say.”

Pidge laughs and even though Keith doesn’t look back at Lance he’s fairly certain that he’s opening his mouth to retort, which is thankfully interrupted before it can even begin by Hunk.

“If I can make a suggestion?” He asks. “Uh, there’s this coffee shop just down the block from where we are now - maybe we should stop there to work out some kind of plan? Otherwise we might just start driving around in circles…”

“Ooohh,” Lance says, leaning closer to Hunk. “Hunk wants to go see his  _ giiirlfrieeend. _ ”

“Jeez, Lance, she’s not my  _ girlfriend- _ ”

Keith makes the turn pointed out to him when it comes without waiting for anyone to agree with Hunk or not, eager for an opportunity to get out of the strange air that he’s felt building up in the car ever since Lance got inside. The building that Keith recognizes right away as being the shop is relatively small, but through the windows in the front he can see that there’s a decent amount of people inside, which doesn’t make him feel  _ great _ about going in, but at the very least he figures it’ll be better than the aimless driving.

“As long as we’re in there, I could use a coffee,” Pidge says, as if on cue a yawn follows almost immediately after.

“How are you so tired in the middle of the day?” Hunk asks.

“How are you so awake?”

“I go to sleep before midnight.”

“Well, I don’t. Now we both have our answers.”

* * *

 

 

The coffee shop is nice enough, even with the amount of people crowded inside. There’s a warmth to it, a feeling of home away from home that makes even Keith relax a little bit once he’s inside and listening to the background buzz of the patrons quiet conversation and soft music with lyrics in a language that he can’t identify. 

Keith notices a barista’s face light up when they walk through the doors, an armful of bracelets jangling as she waves at them from behind the counter. Hunk grins and waves back, and Lance says something that Keith doesn’t quite catch but Hunk’s face burns red and he whispers for Lance to  _ “Be quiet”  _ as the four of them make their way over to the counter, getting into the short line. Keith busies himself with looking up at the menu, names of drinks and foods handwritten on blackboard bordered by pretty designs and separated with little doodles of flowers. 

The menu doesn’t really offer him much. He hasn’t got much of an appetite, can’t remember the last time he did.

(That’s probably not healthy. Oh well. Shiro is probably already planning on giving him a talk about that.)

“Anyone willing to donate a few dollars to the Pidge Needs Coffee Fund?” Pidge asks, turning to smile hopefully specifically at Hunk, who sighs and reaches into his pockets.

“Keep the change,” he says, handing her a ten.

Pidge thanks him as she accepts it. “This is why you’re my favorite, Hunk.”

“Everything I’ve done for you, and this is how you treat me?” Lance asks.

“Friendship isn’t cheap, McClain,” Pidge shrugs. “You’re running on the free trial version of my heart here.”

Lance shakes his head. “You know how to cut  _ deep _ for a twelve year old.”

“Watch yourself.”

They slowly move to the front of the line and by the time they’re there, the girl with the bracelets is on the other side of the counter.

“Hunk,” she says with a smile, a large pair of hoop earrings dangling just over her shoulders as she moves her head. “I didn’t think I would be seeing you today.”

“It was kind of last minute,” Hunk admits. “How’s everything been?”

“Oh, same as ever,” she makes a vague gesture with her hand and giggles a bit nervously. “But it’s always good to see you.”

Hunk smiles and doesn’t seem to know what to say to that, clearly flustered. “Uh.”

“Good to see you too, Shay,” Lance jumps in, feigned hurt in his voice.

She giggles again, finally looking away from the still flustered Hunk to smile at the others. “And you, Lance, and Pidge. And...someone else?” She turns her smile on Keith, who can’t  _ not _ attempt a small one in return. 

“Keith,” he says.

“Keith,” she echoes. “Well, how can I help all of you?”

“I don’t actually think I’m that hungry,” he says very quickly. “Or thirsty, or anything. Just ate before I left. I’ll just go find us a place to sit.”

“Are you sure?” Hunk asks. “If you haven’t got money, I can pay for you too.”

He pretends not to hear, turning sharply on his heels and walking away before anyone can say anything else.

He knows that’s probably rude, but sometimes he doesn’t know what else he’s supposed to do.

* * *

 

Deep down in his soul, Keith should have known that Lance would follow him to the table.

“I’ll give Hunk his space to impress Shay,” is the excuse when he plops down across from him. “The two of them have been into each other for  _ months _ . It’s about time one of them makes a move.”

Keith does not say anything in response to this, instead busying himself with studying the intricate pattern of the tablecloth, honey colored vines that swirl across the brown, circling the decorative flowers placed carefully in the center of the table. He hopes that by some miracle, Lance allows him this silence.

There’s never been much point believing in miracles.

“You aren’t just going to avoid me, are you?” 

Keith looks up and Lance has his chin in his palm, head tilted and blue eyes watching carefully to see what his next move will be. His fingers start tapping absentmindedly against the tablecloth while he waits for his answer, nails neatly painted a golden color that looks almost planned next to the vines on the table. The very same thing strikes him there that did on the bridge that morning, the very same sense of  _ something _ that makes it impossible for Keith to look away. He hates to admit it but there’s something fascinating about Lance, something that he just wants to  _ see _ -

There’s another time, of course, for staring.

Short of a proper response, Keith parrots back the very same thing Lance had said to him during their first meeting, an edge to his tone that he hopes the other takes as a hint to let the conversation drop. “There’s no way to make this not awkward.”

Still smiling, Lance rolls his eyes. “Right, because refusing to even look at me doesn’t make things awkward either.”

“I’m looking at you now,” Keith says.

“Well, that’s only because my charms make the urge irresistible when given enough time.” He winks and Keith scoffs, but he still doesn’t look away. “Look, this whole situation is really weird, but-”

Keith doesn’t let him get much further than that. “We’re not going to talk about this.”

Irritation flickers over Lance’s features and he straightens himself up, resting his arms on the table. “That’s what I’m trying to say, dude. I’m not here for some sappy heart to heart, alright? My sap levels are set at a very firm zero.”

“So we’re done talking, then?”

“Not even close!” Lance says cheerfully. “Because now things aren’t awkward-”

“They still feel pretty awkward.”

“-and you don’t need to avoid me-”

“Says you.”

“-and I have the feeling we’re going to be  _ great _ friends.” Lance finishes without paying any attention to Keith’s protests, and once he’s done he stares at Keith expectantly like he’s waiting for more. 

He doesn’t get a protest, not exactly - instead he gets something that seems to surprise him to hear just as much as it catches Keith off guard to say, a question that slips out before he can even think to stop himself.

“Why?”

His tone is sharp by default, carried by the flow of the conversation, but he doesn’t really mean for it to be. He’s asking, genuinely, because he can’t imagine where Lance could possibly be coming from with this. Just like on the bridge when Lance’s laugh drifted easy off the edge and seemed to dance over the river, a light to him that Keith would never expect to encounter, he simply can’t  _ understand _ .

There’s something fascinating about it.

Something frustratingly, bewilderingly  _ fascinating _ .

Lance doesn’t get the chance to respond.

“Sorry that took so long!” Hunk says as he comes walking up behind Keith, who just barely avoids jumping in surprise at the sudden voice.

“Forgiven,” Lance replies, letting his gaze linger on Keith a moment longer before he turns to bat his eyes at Hunk while the latter sets down his order, a mug of tea and a plate of some kind of salad, and pulls out his chair to sit down. “Love does make people do crazy things…”

Hunk rolls his eyes and laughs, but an undeniable blush spreads across his cheeks. “Christ, Lance, we aren’t even together or anything…”

“Not yet!” Lance says. “But if there’s one thing that I’m awesome at, other than everything else I try to do, it’s the art of  _ romance _ .”

“Lance here is a regular casanova,” Pidge says as she approaches the table next, taking a long sip of her coffee and sitting down next to Keith.

“I’m sure,” Keith mutters.

“I’m choosing to ignore the sarcasm there and thank you for the compliment,” Lance says, reaching over to Hunk’s plate to pick a crouton out of his salad. 

Pidge smiles. “You’re very welcome.”

“The help would be appreciated,” Hunk assures him, picking another one out to hand him before digging into it himself. “But we’ll be fine without it. I’ve got a plan.”

“A plan!” Lance throws the crouton up in the air to catch it with his mouth, somehow managing and pumping his fists in the air in victory. “Do tell.”

Keith allows the trio to talk and tries to make himself as unnoticeable as possible, sitting very still and making no efforts to jump in on their banter. It’s probably not even three in the afternoon yet and he’s spent not just the whole day leading up to now in his room but the whole  _ week _ , but he feels far too tired to make a place for himself here. Perhaps, he thinks, there’s just no point in trying to make a place at all - he’s not meant to be there, not fit to exist in this world with these people who know so well how to smile and function like they people they’re supposed to be.

He wonders almost enviously how Lance does it, how he balances this spirit and cheerfulness with whatever it was that weighed on him heavily enough that it led him to the bridge.

_ “What else am I going to do?”  _ Keith recalls him saying.  _ “I’m kind of over moping.” _

Thinking about whatever the answer must be just sounds much more exhausting than the bare minimum Keith is already putting in. 

* * *

 

They don’t actually end up going anywhere else.

They sit in the coffee shop for maybe a half an hour, a half an hour that Keith spends only half listening to the chatter and bantering of the trio and mostly just thinking about how next time he really  _ will _ drown himself in the shower, regardless of whether or not it’s the polite thing to do. 

But after that half an hour Lance’s phone goes off and he announces to the table with obvious displeasure that he’s being called in for an extra shift at work, an extra shift that he apparently  _ really really _ needs after calling in sick for pretty much the entire week beforehand. He tells Keith not to worry about driving him because it’s a bit out of the way, that he’ll just catch the bus there, and Hunk says he’ll go too and find something to occupy himself while Lance works because he doesn’t have much else to do anyways, and the two of them start clearing things off the table and Pidge gives Keith a look that says  _ “That wasn’t so bad, was it?” _

Just before they part ways Pidge excuses herself to the bathroom and Hunk excuses himself to bid Shay farewell, and Keith is left alone at the table with Lance again, left again under the curious blue eyes of the boy from the bridge who smiles at him and leans across the table to speak.

“Can I count on seeing you in class on Monday?” He asks.

Keith mulls it over for a second, really giving it a thought. “Counting on me to attend class probably isn’t _ever_ a wise move.”

Lance taps his golden fingernail once more against the warm brown of the tablecloth. “I’m going to take that as a maybe.”

Lance and Hunk wave goodbye to Pidge and Keith as they part ways in the parking lot and Keith turns away very quickly to act like he didn’t see.

* * *

 

When Keith pulls Shiro’s car back into its spot outside the apartment building he knows that it’s too soon for him to get away with being back, that if he walks back through the door Shiro will only try again tomorrow to get him out and sociable, maybe even try to drag him along when he goes to work. Keith doesn’t exactly hate it, and Shiro’s coworkers don’t make for terrible company, but he thinks that after what felt like possibly the most exhausting hour and a half of his life all he wants to do is go back to sleep for the remainder of said life.

Instead of going back to his own apartment, he goes to Pidge’s. She doesn’t comment when he silently follows her through the door and to her room and allows him to lay on her bed while she gets her laptop booted up. They go for quite some time with Pidge’s tapping at her keyboard being the only sound in the room, neither of them speaking simply for lack of anything to say. It’s a comfortable silence, same as it always is with Pidge, a kind of silence that it’s easy to clear his head in. 

They speak only once, about an hour later, when Pidge’s typing stops short and she spins around in her chair to look at Keith.

“Keith?” 

He raises his head to look at her and merely hums in response.

“I didn’t mean to like, ambush you or anything this afternoon. With Lance. I just thought it would be funny, you know because I’d heard him talk about you before and he didn’t know that I knew you.”

It takes him a moment to work out what she’s referring to, not the bridge but Lance’s apparent knowledge of him prior to that. In truth, he hadn’t thought much of it besides confusion at how he could have possibly not realized he knew Lance, but then again he supposes that he’s spent quite a lot of time recently not paying attention to a lot of things. 

“It was pretty funny,” he tells her with a small smile. 

“It was” she agrees, laughing a little. There’s a short pause, and then - “I’m glad you came.”

His head comes up the rest of the way. “You are?”

Already spinning back around to face her laptop, Pidge nods. “At the risk of sounding, like, stupid sentimental or something, it was cool to have all my friends in one place. If you ever feel up for coming out with us again, I think Hunk and Lance would be glad you’re there too.”

As nice as it is to hear, Keith can’t help but feel like she’s just saying it to make him feel better about having to go out at all. “I didn’t really do much.”

“You don’t need to.” She shrugs. “Like I said. Just having all of you in the same place was cool for me.”

Pause. Pause. The conversation has almost come to a full stop, the silence falling back over them, and then -

“Thanks.”

He says it so quietly that he’s not sure if Pidge even hears, because if she does then she doesn’t respond. But he says it, and he means it, and regardless of whether or not Pidge really did mean what he says he lets the words wash over him for the time being and chooses to try and accept them as fact, even if just for the moment.

Really, if nothing else, he’s just glad to be Pidge’s friend.

(She’s kind of the closest thing to one that he’s ever had.)

* * *

 

That night when Keith is back in his own room, staring blankly up at the ceiling and wondering if he’ll be allowed any sleep this time, he thinks about what Lance asked him and wonders if it would really be so unbearable to just go to calculus on Monday, to just give it a shot.

He thinks maybe he will. If, of course, for no reason other than to keep Lance off his back the next time he ends up hanging out with him, which he’s sure will happen whether he wants it to or not.

(But that’s the only reason, of course.)

(Nothing else.)

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope everyone enjoyed…! Leave a comment if you like? (And I’ve seen some other people link their tumblr in notes on their fics, maybe I should too…? Lord knows I could use some more mutuals who watch this show .w.)
> 
> Super not proofread, 3 for 3 lol


	4. iii. testing the water

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HEADS UP: I think it’s about time I come clean about the fact that I...don’t actually know shit about college and how it works. I don’t know why I made this a college setting when I literally have no idea how it fuckin’ works. Just...just go with it alright, college isn’t going to be super relevant for much longer. Try to look past my obvious lack of knowledge and focus on the better parts, like...uhh...ha  
> Hope the rest of you also like this chapter, otherwise known as: Keith and Lance only talk for like 5 minutes, again, because Keith can’t hold a conversation. Next chapters will be more interaction-heavy, I swear...Keith just needs a little time to get used to it all :’)  
> also this chapter gets a little...more into keith’s head than the last ones have. not in a super fun way either. sometimes ya just gotta be angsty to get your point across, right?  
> (things felt like they got a little. stale. about halfway through?? ugh im mostly satisfied with this but. some parts have got me >_> )

The weekend, Keith believes very firmly at his core, is for sleeping.

(Regardless of whether or not that’s what he’s been doing for the past week anyways.)

And so for all of Saturday and Sunday, that’s exactly what he does.

After a night’s worth of much internal debate, Keith doesn’t actually end up going to class on Monday. After his brief excursion on Friday, Shiro lets him off the hook and allows him to remain home, albeit with an annoyingly worried glance back over his shoulder when he thinks Keith isn’t going to notice. He’s not tired enough to sleep through the day but he doesn’t think he has the energy to even try and go out. He remains idle in the living room watching the same three episodes of some sitcom he doesn’t think is very funny and sustains himself on an entire box of Poptarts and wonders what it’s like to actually feel something other than  _ tired _ every once and awhile.

Tuesday is very much the same. Keith thinks and thinks and thinks about attending class, he even tells himself he’s going to, but he sleeps right through nine and right through ten and right through eleven and right through twelve and right up until just before one when Shiro calls. Shiro calls  _ three times _ trying to wake him up, and succeeds, leaving Keith awake in his bed for the next couple of hours instead of asleep. A revolutionary change in pace, truly. 

On Wednesday, he wakes up at three in the morning and can’t seem to fall back asleep. 

The sun comes up at six and Keith, for the first time in a while, rises with it; lets his feet carry him around the corner to the bathroom where he stares at himself in the mirror for what feels like so long that he starts to forget whether or not he’s awake. There’s a strange look about his reflection that he doesn’t quite understand, something shocking about staring into his own eyes that he can feel there in the distance but not quite touch. There are dark bags under his eyes and he wonders how that could possibly be when he doesn’t do anything except for sleep, and he reaches up as though to touch them but he stops just before he makes contact with his own skin, worried that once he tries he’ll find that his fingers go right through it and maybe he really has been dreaming this whole time after all.

A numbness starts in his chest and begins a slow climb through his veins until he can feel it reach the tips of his fingers and the soles of his feet and he can see it reach his eyes. A numbness that tells him to return to his bed, who cares if he can sleep or not, sleeping or awake, living or dead, it’s all the same, it’s all just nothing. An often unbearably numb  _ nothing _ . He reaches again for the bags under his eyes not in the direction of his face, but this time towards his reflection, leaning close to the mirror and tracing the dark shadows painted into his skin. If not for the sight of his breath fogging the surface of the mirror he would say he’s dead already, cast off the bridge long ago and now nothing more than some kind of incredibly bored ghost. 

He pulls his hand away and leans out just as slowly, narrowing his eyes ever slightly at the ghost in the mirror and watching as its own eyes narrow in return. There’s a sensation in his feet like something tugging him down, some weight tied to his heels desperate to drag him below the floor and all the way into the ground, into the river. Very distantly he thinks to himself that it would be nice to cry right now but he can’t make himself - the longer he stares at the ghost in the mirror the more helpless he becomes. When was the last time he cried? He can’t say for sure that he remembers. It’s not like crying was something fun, something he’d ever felt particularly proud of, especially in childhood, but right now all he wants is to cry. To prove to himself and to the ghost and to the weights tugging him towards the mud at the bottom of the river that he’s still capable of it. That there’s something left to feel, something other than  _ tired _ , something other than  _ bored _ .

He imagines what it might look like to touch his fist to the glass and watch the ghost’s face shatter into a million pieces underneath it. Maybe  _ that _ will feel like something.

An alarm goes off across the hall. Shiro should be waking up now.

Keith grabs his jacket and his shoes from his room and puts them on the parking lot. He knows that he should at the very least text Shiro, let him know that he’s going out, tell him where he’ll be. But even he doesn’t know where he’s going, not entirely. Not even he can always follow the thoughts spinning out in his mind, one after another, forcing him into action and leaving his body to work out where it wants to go on its own.

_ Go,  _ they tell him, nothing more.

So he gets on his motorcycle and he  _ goes _ .

* * *

 

He doesn’t really know why he does it.

Boredom, he tells himself, tired of sitting around doing nothing, tired of the look in Shiro’s eyes when he sees Keith still in bed before he leaves for work, tired of being  _ tired _ and the feeling that he hasn’t done  _ anything _ .

(Well. If that was the case, he could have gone anywhere.)

Maybe Lance has just a _ little bit _ to do with it.

Keith doesn’t leave that morning with the intention to go to class very clear in his mind, but class is where he ends up, walking in quickly to take the seat in the very back corner that he’d claimed all the way back at the beginning of the first semester. Nobody pays him much attention and he’s thankful for it - after the incident with Lance apparently taking note of him from day one, he’s become a little concerned that other people might have noticed his existence too.

And, well, he can’t have that, can he?

Speak of the devil in all his grinning glory - not long after Keith has situated himself, none other than Lance himself comes strolling through the doors. Keith watches as he enters, wrapped in conversation with a girl who doesn’t seem to be listening all that closely and turns to cut him off almost as soon as the two of them are inside, rushing forward to take a seat next to another girl towards the front of the room and picking up a conversation with much more enthusiasm when she does.

Keith’s first thought is:  _ How fucking rude. _

Keith’s second thought is:  _ Well, I’ve probably done that. _

What’s strange though, or maybe not at all strange considering the type of person that Lance has proven himself to be, is that if it bothers him in the slightest he doesn’t let it show. There’s no change in his face, no wavering of his grin, he just waves goodbye to her turned back and surveys the room in search of someone else to talk to.

Lance’s gaze passes right over him initially, and for a reason that he can’t possibly understand Keith thinks he feels almost disappointed by it -

_ (Stupid, why did you come, why did you think that it mattered, why did you think he was serious-) _

But there’s a pause, a double take - and then a thousand-watt smile flashing right at him, a light shining from one end of the room to the other like he’s a kid on Christmas fucking morning, and he straightens his shoulders and takes that confident stroll of his right over to where Keith is to sit himself right next to him.  _ Right _ next to him. It seems a bit like he moves the chair even closer than it was to begin with, close enough that his shoulder grazes Keith’s just slightly.

Keith instinctively inches his own chair away and he’s grateful when Lance doesn’t try to get closer again. Instead he stays right where he is and rather than continuing to look at Keith, looks up towards the front of the class, even though the professor himself hasn’t yet arrived. Keith tries to look away to, but can’t seem to stick to it, turning his head forward but continuing to peek over at Lance out of the corners of his eyes. He reaches into his bag for a notebook that’s already open to a page full of writing that Keith can’t decipher with his quick glances and clipped to the front of that notebook is a pen that he removes and immediately starts clicking.

When Lance finally does speak, there’s no hello, no real greeting, and he doesn’t even look away from the front of the room.

“Is there a reason why we shouldn’t be friends?”

That doesn’t sound like a proper start to a conversation. Even Keith knows that.

“What?”

“At the coffee shop. You asked why I thought we’d be friends.” Lance looks over and the pen keeps clicking. “Is there a reason why we shouldn’t be?”

Keith can think of quite a few reasons, actually, but none that seem entirely right to say, nor like anything that Lance would probably accept. What is he supposed to say? 

_ See, here’s the thing - I don’t really know how to act like a functioning person? That’s a dealbreaker for most people. _

_ It’s kind of funny, actually, but I’m actually no fun to be around ever, at all. So friendship with me is your loss. _

_ Well, sorry Lance, but actually I kind of plan on killing myself regardless of whether or not I have friends, so it’s probably not a good idea to try. _

“I’m not really looking for friends,” he finally settles on.  _ Click click.  _ Without even meaning to he pulls a glare on the hand holding the pen, and the clicking stops. “Nothing personal."

That much is true as well, he figures; not much of a point looking for friends when he can’t possibly imagine himself being alive this time next year. He feels a slight twinge of guilt at the statement when he thinks about the few people who he would consider himself close to - Shiro, of course, the only family he’s ever had, and Pidge, who in a surprisingly short amount of time has managed to take a spot for herself closer to his heart than anyone else has managed. But they’re already there, positions already stable. It’s not like he would be doing himself any good going out and finding  _ new _ friends, nor would he be doing them any good either. His friendship would do nothing but cast a shadow that they would either be able to shake far too quickly or never at all.

(He’s really not sure which sounds worse to him - to be forgotten immediately, thought of by no one after his death? Or to never be forgotten, to leave some irreplaceable hole in the lives of the few people he cares about?)

(Perhaps selfishly, he tries not to think about it. No sense complicating things.)

Cheerful as ever comes the response. “Well, lucky for you, there’s no need to go looking. I’m right here, friend delivery, free of charge.” Keith rolls his eyes, prompting a quick add-on of “No returns.”

He tries for another strategy of deflecting the friendliness. “If I remember correctly, didn’t Pidge say something about you hating me?”

Lance waves his hand dismissively. “Oh, that’s all water under the bridge now.” His grin widens after he says it and he half raises finger guns to point at Keith when he says it, remaining like that for a long moment and even pausing in his pen clicking before his hands drop and his expression falls into one more akin to disappointment. “That was fucking hilarious, Keith.” 

...Was it?

“Was it?”

Lance blinks. A mix of emotions that’s somewhere between irritation and amusement passes through his eyes. “Water under the bridge. You know. The expression? That it’s all in the past now? And how we - Keith, that was  _ hilarious _ .”

“Not really.”

“Don’t I get a pity laugh at least? I made a suicide joke out of an  _ idiom!” _

“You’re an  _ idiot _ .”

Lance rolls his eyes. “Good one.”

“Well, I wasn’t trying to be  _ clever, _ ” Keith rolls his own right back. 

“ _ Well, _ maybe you - oh,” Lance cuts himself off very suddenly, focus turning towards the front of the room, at which point the both of them realize that class has already begun. At which point in their short conversation that happened, Keith isn’t sure, but it can’t have been very long ago. “We’ll continue this later,” Lance promises, voice dropping now that it’s come to his attention that most other conversations in the room have ceased. “But mark my words, you  _ will  _ appreciate my humor.”

“Not likely.”

Though Lance does turn his head to pout at him - actually  _ pout _ \- the conversation does reach its end there, or at least a pause, leaving Keith to try and gather his thoughts enough to listen, figuring he might as well as long as he’s here. But the more he does, the more he really puts effort into trying to pay attention... _ damn. _ He remembers now why he would fall asleep so often.

Lance doesn’t last long trying to pay attention. His attention quickly turns to the notebook in front of him which he begins to scribble on wildly with the pen, though whether he’s writing or drawing or  _ what _ remains unknown to Keith, who doesn’t want to be so nosy as to look directly over and try to figure it out. Instead, Keith keeps his own focus ahead, listening more to Lance than he does to anything else; the sounds of the paper and then pen, the occasional shuffle or click. While he’s at it, he observes a little more of the classroom, the backs of the heads ahead of him, and as he does so he starts to realize something else.

Now it occurs to Keith just how out of place he is. No bags, no books, no attention to give. For a class so early, everyone even looks relatively put together - Keith looks down at himself and and the same shirt and jeans he’s been too lazy to change out of even for sleep for days, the red jacket that he’s had for as long as he can remember, the untied boots scuffed and worn out somehow despite his recent lack of outside activity. It’s not that he feels self-conscious exactly, it’s not that he feels lesser than anyone around him; he’s never cared much about how he  _ looks _ . It just cements what he already knows - he’s out of place. And if other people take the time to look at him, they’ll know it right away.

(So maybe that is a little self-conscious. Whatever.)

He looks around himself, really looks around. Books and bags and books and bags and  _ futures _ , some semblance of an idea of the future on their minds. He wonders how far in the future they’re thinking now, ten minutes, ten days, ten years. He wonders how far in the future they’re thinking, wonders what it’s like. Can they close their eyes and really see themselves in ten years? Ten months? Hell, even ten days? What is it like, he wonders as he watches the backs of their heads, admires the corners of the books; what is it like to be able to picture anything about your life other than how to most efficiently end it?

No, the future has always been far out of his reach, something dark and murky that he never saw as attainable to begin with. Living, he’s come to understand, is at its very root nothing but a burden. For him, at least. And without the ability to see a point to it, what’s the point in living with it?

Books and bags and futures. None of which he has. Just the thought of it all exhausts him. This is not where he wants to be right now, sitting in the back of the room with  _ opportunity _ and _ hope  _ hovering over his head and buzzing as they pass by his face, a buzzing that buries itself in his ears and in the back of his head no matter how he tries to shut it out. It buzzes and darts just out of his reach, daring him to just try and catch it even though it knows he gave up long ago, taunting him with bright eyes and books. 

This is not where he wants to be.  _ This is not where he wants to be. _

(He dares to hope it might make him cry but he knows that it won’t, that nothing will.)

A voice escapes him that he doesn’t entirely recognize as his own in the moment but he knows must be, hisses out from between his lips to form a very quiet  _ “Fuck this,” _ that attracts only the attention of Lance.

“Huh?”

He’s looking up for an explanation, but Keith is already moving, trying unsuccessfully to keep his chair quiet when he pushes it back. The chair scrapes against the floor with the force of his sharp push. “I have to go,” he says very quietly, and not even he’s sure if it’s intended for Lance or just something he’s telling himself. He doesn’t leave Lance any opportunity to turn it into a conversation, doesn’t let him even try. He simply rises abruptly, turns on his heel, and he makes for the door while trying not to think about how many pairs of eyes may or may not be on him when he does.

(He knows of at least one that is and it’s the pair that he tries the very hardest not to think about.)

His brain tells him to go, and his body tells him to go, and Keith isn’t left with much of a choice in the matter when the two are in agreement.

So Keith does what Keith does best.

He goes.

* * *

 

The first thing he does when he gets back to the apartment is kick the front door.

Then, just for good measure, he kicks his bedroom door when he gets there too.

Fuck. That really didn’t go well, did it?

It’s not like he stopped going to class just for shits and giggles. He doesn’t know why he thought Lance would make things any different, why he thought that he would be able to keep it together for long enough to sit through a class and act any little bit like a normal  _ person _ . He kicks the door again, hears the doorknob hit the wall with a crash that echoes in his ears long after it’s over, and goes to the bathroom to strip down and let the scalding water of the shower melt his skin right off his back.

_ You don’t need skin if you’re not a person, after all. _

He melts and he melts and he melts until the water runs cold and freezes his skin right back to his body like candle wax that dries right back to the sides before it reaches the bottom, too stupid to know that it’s only safe there until the next time the candle is lit. 

All the stupid candles are melted into nothing eventually.

Keith sits on the floor of the shower long after it’s turned off and lets the water on his face imitate tears, because god knows he isn’t human enough to shed any of his own anymore. 

* * *

 

The next two nights, he dreams in blue and gold.

When he wakes up on Friday and Shiro tries to convince him to go to class, he gives in faster than he usually would and tells himself that he’ll give it one last chance.

If it doesn’t work, he can always go back to the bridge.

Death, he’s decided, would work wonders for getting him out of most things.

* * *

 

It’s Friday morning and Keith is sitting in class again, same seat, same clothes, same lack of material.

Take two.

Lance sends him a shit-eating grin from across the room once he sees him there and it almost makes him regret his decision enough to get up and leave again, but he doesn’t. For the life of him, he can’t understand why he doesn’t, but he  _ doesn’t _ . He sits there and he watches Lance come over, turning away quickly when he hears the scraping of the chair legs against the floor and Lance takes his seat.

“By the way,” he says, leaning down to grab his open notebook from his bag just as he had the last time. “I totally don’t buy you not wanting friends.”

Keith crosses his arms and shifts down in his seat. “Why’s that?” He asks, even though he’s pretty sure he already knows what Lance’s reasoning is. And sure enough, he’s right -

“You came back.”

Well, it’s not like he can refute that.

_ Fuck. _

When Keith doesn’t respond, or even react, Lance straightens up to turn and look at him before speaking again to prompt him.

“There are, of course, with two options.” He stops there, leaves an intentional space for Keith to look back at him, which he does, and then continues. “Either one-” he holds up a single finger. “Your brief encounters with me have left you utterly and incurably taken by my irresistible charms, and you’ve come here with a ring hidden in the depths of your mullet to pull out and propose to me with on the spot, in which case...I do. Judging by your face, however...I’m going to guess that’s not it?”

Unamused, Keith shakes his head, and Lance at the very same time nods.

“Right. Figured. Which leaves us with option  _ dos- _ ” he holds up his second finger. “That being, somewhere deep in the very bottom of your heart, you really do maybe, kind of, a little bit want to be my friend.” 

Here’s the thing.

Keith thinks that Lance might  _ maybe, kind of, a little _ bit be right. 

He came all the way out here after all,  _ twice _ , more or less solely to see Lance. There’s still a sense of  _ something _ to him that draws Keith like a pathetic moth to a flame, a something that he can’t let go, a something that he just wants to  _ understand _ . He’s not sure if that counts as a desire for friendship  _ exactly _ -

(He hasn’t had much experience in that area after all, not nearly enough to make a judgement on it-)

But it’s certainly enough. Enough to force Keith to relent there with a sigh that Lance understands immediately, a sigh of resignation that Lance hears as an echoing call of victory.

“Friends, then?” He asks.

“We’ll see,” Keith says.

Lance takes that as confirmation. “Friends.”

Keith might not be entirely sure how friendship works, but he doesn’t think that’s how it’s supposed to start.

But Lance seems to have come to a decision, and doesn’t strike Keith as the type to change his mind on such matters easily, and the professor begins talking and Lance turns to his notebook scribbles and Keith thinks well, that’s just that then. And when his stomach begins to twist and the buzzing starts up in his ears and his eyes get caught again on the books in front of the people in the rows ahead of him he just forces them shut, closes his eyes and takes a deep breath and lays his head on the surface in front of him and says quietly, muffled, from where his face is pressed into the sleeves of his jacket, “Wake me up when it’s time to go.”

Just as quiet from somewhere in the world outside of his crossed arms, he hears a reply. “Will do, buddy.”

_ Buddy.  _ So they’re already there, huh?

And so that’s just that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my writing process is really just a lot of me passionately singing along to the dear evan hansen soundtrack while staring at a blank page. oh, and also i (unfortunately) have a [tumblr](http://celebitxt.tumblr.com) if that interests anyone.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope that you got some enjoyment out of that. Please, leave me a comment if you'd like me to continue. I hope everyone has a wonderful day/night.


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